“GRAND”: Purgatory just isn’t as interesting as Hell. |
Purgatory offers less inherent drama than Hell. It’s a problem Dante must have been aware of, and it’s one that catches up with Dublin novelist Roddy Doyle as he continues the story of Paula Spencer, the abused, alcoholic protagonist of The Woman Who Walked into Doors.That 1996 novel, a headlong first-person narrative, related Paula’s early life and marriage to the sadistic Charlo. In a stream-of-consciousness style, it revealed the pride and the lust of the healthy, young Paula, and how she was dragged down. As her shock turned to fear, and that fear pushed her into the bottle, she developed a sense of complicity with the violence, completing a masterful portrayal of abuse.
Now, 10 years later, Doyle addresses Paula’s redemption. Charlo is long gone. (He was killed by the police in the first book.) And Paula, 48, is four months sober, determined yet again not to fail her children, at least one of whom has followed her into substance abuse. Her life isn’t easy. She thinks about drinking constantly, measuring her sobriety by every yardstick she can muster. (“Four months, five days. A third of a year. Half a pregnancy, nearly.”) But, as she says in the book’s opening line, “She copes.”
Given the damage, Paula is coping well. She’s working as a house cleaner, and on most days she has food in the fridge for the two children still at home, Jack, 16, and Leanne, 22. But her past haunts her. Her oldest, Nicola, married and successful, has been embittered by years as everyone’s surrogate mother. The next, John Paul, appears to have beaten his heroin addiction, perhaps by cutting his mother out of his life. Jack is fine, doing well at school, and Paula is determined to mother him as she never did the others. Leanne, however, worries her; she suspects her youngest daughter is drinking too much. Uncertain as to how to proceed, Paula approaches Leanne gracelessly, pushing her away. She saves up to buy Jack a computer, and she keeps after Leanne, even as she recalls “giving” Nicola a bottle of vodka, “Wrapped it and all,” years before, a bottle she would, of course, seek to retrieve.
Paula’s life is not all amends. Even as she pries her thoughts from the bottle, she begins to enjoy life. Snacking on prawns, “she was tasting, really tasting something for the first time in — she didn’t know how long. Years.” Soon, she’s noticing the masculine arms of an Italian chef and rediscovering music as well. (She’s partial to the White Stripes and U2.) By the book’s end, she may even have a suitor. Doyle shows that progress inch by inch. The references to drink lessen. Paula’s catchword, “ grand,” shows up with increasing regularity. But even as he conveys the drudgery of Paula’s work life, the day-to-day struggles with Leanne and the bottle, and the little triumphs along the way, he can’t quite reproduce the magic of The Woman Who Walked into Doors.
